Xbox 360 Launch Guide: The Hardware

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Everything you wanted to know about the Xbox 360 hardware, but were afraid to ask.

By Douglass C. Perry

In this new generation of consoles Microsoft intends from the very start to do things differently. Different than Sony, Nintendo, 3D0, or Sega before it. Starting with the hardware, the company once known for its operating systems and word documents has created an internal beast of an engine and an external design that appeals to a mass worldwide audience. While Microsoft's strength is, and has always been, software, the giant corporation has had to bear down and create a console that can create fantastic graphics, incredible sound, and handle multiple functions simultaneously. This means from receiving voicemail from a friend online while playing a game, to playing online with 31 other players, to cranking out millions of polygons a second -- all at the same time.

What kind of machine can do that? For all intents and purposes, one that you've never seen before. Thus, getting to know the innards of console you're going to buy is important. First, it means you'll have a better understanding of the power and sophistication behind the flashy polygons on screen, and second, you'll have better ammo with which to backwardbrag to your friends. In all seriousness, the Xbox 360 console may be the first console to start this generation, but like Sony's PlayStation 3, one of the most significant aspects of its construction, of its architecture, is its specifications.

But first a short summary of the Xbox 360. Microsoft's Xbox 360 is its second console in the worldwide market, designed to play videogames, music, movies, and to play online games. Microsoft will ship the system on Tuesday, November 22, 2005 in North America at the core system price $299.99 (Xbox 360, one standard wired controller, a faceplate, and a standard AV cable, but no hard drive), or the premium price, $399.99 (Xbox 360, a detachable 20-GB hard-drive, a wireless controller, faceplate, headset, a component HD AV cable, an Ethernet cable, and for a limited time, a remote controller).

In Europe, the premium and core systems will sell for, respectively, ¿279.99 and ¿209.99 in the UK and &#Array;399.99 and &#Array;299.99 in the rest of Europe. The Japanese launch date is Saturday December 10. The price excluding tax is 37,900 yen (about $350) and every console will come with hard drive, remote control, and wireless controller. While X360 launches globally this holiday in North America, Europe, and Japan, the launch unfortunately doesn't include all world territories. In calendar year 2006, X360 will launch in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, Mexico and Colombia. Microsoft would not clarify what quarter, month, or date "calender year '06" was.

The system plays 12X dual-layer DVD-ROMs now, though Bill Gates said the system might support different storage media in the future.

Below are the official specifications for Xbox 360:

Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU

3 symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each

2 hardware threads per core; 6 hardware threads total

1 VMX-128 vector unit per core; 3 total

128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread

1 MB L2 cache

CPU Game Math Performance

9 billion dot product operations per second

Custom ATI Graphics Processor

500 MHz

10 MB embedded DRAM

48-way parallel floating-point dynamically-scheduled shader pipelines

Unified shader architecture

Polygon Performance

500 million triangles per second

Pixel Fill Rate

16 gigasamples per second fillrate using 4X MSAA

Shader Performance

48 billion shader operations per second

Memory

512 MB GDDR3 RAM

700 MHz DDR

Unified memory architecture

Memory Bandwidth

22.4 GBs memory interface bus bandwidth

256 GBs memory bandwidth to EDRAM

21.6 GBs front-side bus

Overall System Floating-Point Performance

1 TFLOP

Storage

Custom detachable and upgradeable 20 GB hard drive, sold with Xbox 360 tier, or separately from the Core System.

12X dual-layer DVD-ROM

Memory unit support starting at 64 MB

I/O

Support for up to four wireless game controllers

3 USB 2.0 ports

2 memory unit slots

Optimized for Online

Instant, out-of-the-box access to Xbox Live features, including Xbox Live Marketplace for downloadable content, Gamer Profile for digital identity, and voice chat to talk to friends while playing games, watching movies or listening to music.